


Untold Wonders

by theskywasblue



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Dark Agenda, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-09
Updated: 2010-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-10 11:31:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hazel poses a question, and for once, Ukoku has an answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untold Wonders

**Author's Note:**

  * For [epiphanytiff](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=epiphanytiff).



> For the prompt: The policy of truth.

“I reckon, when my master left this world, he didn’ have nothin’ like this in mind fer me.”

Ukoku’s cigarette flares in the darkness, a tiny ball of flame, a star that Hazel follows as they move through the alleyway, away from the crowded bar. The smell of it reminds him a little of home – burning earth and secret death, of endless candles burning in the confines of the church at the feet of the Virgin Mary.

“And what do you think he had in mind, little angel?”

Ukoku would be invisible without the glow of the cigarette, the night seems unnaturally dark, and has a chill that works its way into Hazel’s bones; though it could be all in his mind, tangled up with Ukoku’s stories of sages, demons, and dark resurrections.

Hazel always did have too much of an imagination.

“I guess I don’t rightly know.”

His master kept a lot of secrets, right up until the moment of his death. He had a good heart – that wasn’t his defect by any means – if anything he was guilty of perhaps loving Hazel too much, of trying to protect something in him that didn’t necessarily exist in the first place.

Love is like holding a dove in your hands – hold it too tightly and you crush it, hold it too loosely and it flies away.

“You never dared to ask?”

Ukoku’s footfalls are almost silent, though the soft swish of his robes betrays him – or perhaps that is Hazel’s own coattails, moved by the wind that has picked up, like a phantom chasing them.

“Or did you think he wouldn’t tell you the truth?”

“Hey now,” he has at least the sense to be offended on Bishop Filbert’s behalf – though he cannot tell if anything that escapes Ukoku’s lips is meant to be genuine, or simply a method of eliciting a reaction. “My master never spoke a word of a lie ‘long as he lived.”

“Hmm...” Ukoku responds, typically non-committal. He hasn’t changed at all, Hazel thinks, not in all these years, and that is more than a little frightening. Nothing in the living world should be so perfectly unchanging. “No man has it in him to speak the truth every minute of his life – and that, my little angel, is the truth.”

Hazel rolls his eyes, gratified that it cannot be seen. “I don’t reckon I appreciate yer sense of irony, Mister Ukoku.”

“No one does, these days.”

“Well ya must’ve had a master once too. Do ya reckon what ya became was all he dreamed for ya?”

The question isn’t meant to be provoking – it is honest curiosity, a desire in Hazel to learn _something_ of Ukoku that is an answer and not simply another question left to rattle endlessly inside his head. He knows Ukoku’s power – has witnessed it first hand – but now he wants a glimpse of something human in the other man.

Considering that everywhere he looks there seem to be creatures walking the earth with powers beyond his comprehension, it isn’t surprising really that something in him wants to have the assurance that he’s not alone.

Ukoku turns to him in the darkness, his body invisible amongst the shadows, but his presence like a lead weight around Hazel’s ankles, bearing him down to the cold ocean floor, and leans in close enough that his breath is warm and whiskey-sweet on the side of Hazel’s neck as he whispers:

“You have no idea how much I wish I knew.”

-End-


End file.
